Pre-purchase questions...

[300prospect]

Greetings,

I am close to purchasing a new 300C after taking several test drives. Last weekend I discovered the ESP toggle and had a rousing experience indulging myself and the sales person with a feat of burning rubber and smoke. However, today I visited a different dealer and attempted the same only to be extremely disappointed -- with ESP disabled, in 1st gear on the auto stick, I could not get *any* burn. 300C just glided off the mark as if there was a huge lag or ramp-up after hitting the accelerator pedal.

The sales person mentioned the adaptive throttle response, something, I understand, which has been in many vehicles in the last ten years. The sales person said that this particular 300C had been driving my mostly elderly people since it came in the day before, 200 miles of old folkery puttering around corners.

Does this sound reasonable? The 300C I tried this last weekend which caused the special effects at the stoplight had about 30 miles on it.

On a secondary note, I went back to Chrysler's page today to and I saw that the price of a loaded 300C dropped about $200 -- it looks like UConnect and Sirius price tags have been drastically reduced. So, I continued to the so-callled "Payment Calculator" and noticed that it's a new piece of code that was just rolled out in the last day or two. It's clearly different. Along with this, it seems that lease payments have gone up *drastically* in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, I was ready to land INTO a nice $487 lease payment and today it's up to $699! What the hell happened?

Something is up because I fished the old URL out of my cache and went to its page and viewed the Javascript. Both pages have Javascript indicating the residual factor is 55% for a 36 month lease. That's kind of lousy... but I believe the new applet is computing the residual incorrectly. The values passed to the JavaScript applet are the same in each script...

FYI: The old payment calculator code is still on-line, feeding FROM the same DATA sources as the new one... the new one just has terrible lease rates compared to the one I've been looking at for weeks now...

[dodgeatheart]

Chrysler's new incentive is $1000 cash back IF you use their financing. So, to make up for it somewhere, they've increased their finance rates to get back some of the $1000.

[DMAG]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by 300prospect
	On a secondary note, I went back to Chrysler's page today to and I saw that the price of a loaded 300C dropped about $200 -- it looks like UConnect and Sirius price tags have been drastically reduced. So, I continued to the so-callled "Payment Calculator" and noticed that it's a new piece of code that was just rolled out in the last day or two. It's clearly different. Along with this, it seems that lease payments have gone up *drastically* in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, I was ready to land INTO a nice $487 lease payment and today it's up to $699! What the hell happened? Something is up because I fished the old URL out of my cache and went to its page and viewed the Javascript. Both pages have Javascript indicating the residual factor is 55% for a 36 month lease. That's kind of lousy... but I believe the new applet is computing the residual incorrectly. The values passed to the JavaScript applet are the same in each script... FYI: The old payment calculator code is still on-line, feeding FROM the same DATA sources as the new one... the new one just has terrible lease rates compared to the one I've been looking at for weeks now...

Now that's just weird! Did the saleman mention any lease rate or what the residual would be?

By the way, welcome to the site!

[300prospect]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by dodgeatheart
	Chrysler's new incentive is $1000 cash back IF you use their financing. So, to make up for it somewhere, they've increased their finance rates to get back some of the $1000.

This was for a lease, not a purchase.

I've never seen residual values go up and down $5K at a time overnight...

[300prospect]

I think I've figured it out...

It looks like their new code is basing the residual value off of the *base* MSRP. So if you have a loaded 300C, at $39K, the base price for that model is $33K. So, the residual of the $33K vehicle is drastically less than that of the $39K vehicle. This is, of course, wrong.

In fact, I just confirmed it.

If you go INTO the program (any web browser, cookies enabled, Javascript enabled), and enter the new Capitalized Cost -- the script no longer saves the vehicle sale price FROM the Build and Price page when you click 'estimate payments', this was hint #1. Anyway, if you go to the lease tab and change the capitalized cost FROM $32995 to $38795, you will see that the "One time payment" skyrockets but the residual value stays the same. In the old script, the residual value goes up, based on the configuration of the car.

Looks like they have a bug in their Javascript and the mystery is solved.

[DMAG]

Good eye 300prospect. You might want to shoot their web designer an email.

[Greeneyej]

Just a snipet FROM just-autos

while Chrysler is offering $3,500 cash back on its Dodge Durango SUV – and is also offering cash rebates of up to $2,000 on its new flagship sedan, the Chrysler 300 and 300C, according to incentive DATA sent to dealers.

Here's the link http://www.just-auto.com/news_detail.asp?art=44319

[300CHemi]

The state of NY just dropped leases, so Chrysler (and this is my understanding of how this worked) changed the whole lease structure so that there is no longer a B, B+, A or A+ lease structure. There is just A for everyone. If you had an A+ credit rating in the Chrysler system then this change hurt you. For eveyone else it helped bigtime.

That may be part of your answer. The change happened on MAy 1st.